COMPANIES INVESTIGATION.

Waikato Times, Volume 116, Issue 19330, 9 August 1934, Page 6

COMPANIES INVESTIGATION.

The startling disclosures made in the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon and evening by the presentation of an interim report from the Company Promotion Commission will have caused profound repercussions throughout the Dominion. The fact that tho Commission should have found it necessary and advisable to single out by name a particular group of companies and expose its information concerning them to the fullest light of publicity, is convincing evidence of the gravity of the situation. Its urgent request to Parliament for power to make a more searching inquiry has very properly been granted.

Mingled with the concern which will naturally be felt at the existence of a state of affairs needing such an investigation, there will be a general feeling of satisfaction in the manner in which the Commission has accepted the task given to it. Its interim report which, it is careful to explain, merely cites a particular set of circumstances in order to substantiate tho Commission s request — is a document which is unprecedented in its fearlessness and candour. The Commission, in the pursuit of its duties, has found it necessary to examine more closely the affairs of a group of companies. It has met resistance, and it now seeks to be clothed with sufficient legislative authority' to enable it to continue.

V The Government is to be congratulated upon the promptness and completeness of its response to the Commission’s request. Members of both Government and Opposition agreed upon the necessity of action, and an empowering Actjvas consequently passed and placed on the Statute Book within the short space of two and a-half hours. Simultaneously action was taken by Governments in Australia at the request of the New Zealand Government in order to forestall any attempt to evade the consequences of the Commission’s discoveries.

While the blow administered to the confidence of investors by the Commission’s disclosures may conceivably affect the market for other investments, the swiftness and vigour of the Government s action should proye a powerful force in preventing anything in the nature of a panic. It is to be hoped, however, that there will be no slackening of effort until the whole situation is probed to its depths, and the cloud which has been cast over New Zealand’s commercial repute has been removed.